Neurotechnology-Trends

Neurotechnology Trends, and the Neurosoftware Market

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The Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO) just announced the top ten emerg­ing areas of neu­ro­science that will “impact the future of treat­ments for brain and ner­vous sys­tem”: Top 10 Neu­ro­science Trends in 2007.

It pro­vides superb food for thought. And some of them will sound famil­iar to read­ers of this blog:

* 6. Nor­mal brain aging gets more atten­tion: More research and devel­op­ment is being focused on think­ing impair­ments that only par­tial­ly lim­it inde­pen­dence and qual­i­ty of life for senior cit­i­zens, adults and school aged chil­dren. Neu­rosoft­ware will pen­e­trate nurs­ing homes and schools, as brain fit­ness soft­ware becomes new first-line treat­ment strategy.
* 8. Pre­ven­tion evi­dence grows: You are what you eat; smok­ing is as bad as we thought; and new stud­ies reveal the effects of envi­ron­men­tal sub­stances on Alzheimer’s dis­ease, Parkin­son’s dis­ease and others.
* 9. Emo­tion­al dis­or­ders research advances:  New research con­tin­ues to link neu­ro­ge­n­e­sis to treat­ment of depres­sion.  A bet­ter under­stand­ing of PTSD should lead to new treat­ment regimes.

Want to read prob­a­bly the best overview of the neurosoftware/ brain fit­ness soft­ware mar­ket? Check this arti­cle, fresh from the oven: Thank Boomers for Buff­ing Up Brain Mar­ket.

To clar­i­fy the num­bers men­tioned: we project $225m in the US alone (grow­ing from $70m in 2003), bro­ken-down as fol­lows: $80m for the Con­sumer seg­ment, $60m in K12 Edu­ca­tion, $50m in Clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions, and $35m in the Cor­po­rate seg­ment. The Con­sumer seg­ment, with a healthy aging val­ue propo­si­tion, is the most recent one but the most rapid­ly growing.

Cognitive Reserve and Lifestyle

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Update: we now have an in-depth inter­view with Yaakov Stern, lead­ing advo­cate of the cog­ni­tive reserve the­o­ry, and one of the authors of the paper we review below: click on Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve-Yaakov Stern. 

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In hon­or of the Week of Sci­ence pre­sent­ed at Just Sci­ence from Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 5, through Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 11, we will be writ­ing about “just sci­ence” this week. We thought we would take this time to dis­cuss more deeply some of the key sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions in brain fitness.

Today, we will high­light the key points in an excel­lent review of cog­ni­tive reserve: Scarmeas, Niko­laos and Stern, Yaakov. Cog­ni­tive reserve and lifestyle. Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal and Exper­i­men­tal Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. 2003;25:625–33.

What is Cog­ni­tive Reserve?
The con­cept of a cog­ni­tive reserve has been around since 1998 when a post mortem analy­sis of 137 peo­ple with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease showed that the patients exhib­it­ed few­er clin­i­cal symp­toms than their actu­al pathol­o­gy sug­gest­ed. (Katz­man et al. 1988) They also showed high­er brain weights and greater num­ber of neu­rons when com­pared to age-matched con­trols. The inves­ti­ga­tors hypoth­e­sized that the patients had a larg­er “reserve” of neu­rons and abil­i­ties that off­set the loss­es caused by Alzheimer’s. Since then the con­cept of cog­ni­tive reserve has been defined as the abil­i­ty of an indi­vid­ual to tol­er­ate pro­gres­sive brain pathol­o­gy with­out demon­strat­ing clin­i­cal cog­ni­tive symp­toms.
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